This Gaming optimized Android smartphone definitely has its background, and many of you will be happy to know that this long, very long wait is about to be over. Verizon has finally announced that the Xperia Play will be available in stores on May 26, for $199.99 on a two-year contract. For those that prefer having things well prepared and ready, pre-orders will also be available as of May 19, which is this Thursday.

Additional Features:

1 GHz Qualcomm® Snapdragon® II processor with Adreno 205 GPU

Adobe® Flash® Player

4-inch multi-touch display

5-megapixel rear-facing camera

VGA front-facing camera for still shots and video chatting

Support for Google Mobile Services including Gmailâ„¢, YouTubeâ„¢, Google Talkâ„¢, Google Searchâ„¢, Google Mapsâ„¢, and access to more than 200,000 apps available to download from Android Marketâ„¢

Mobile hotspot capability— share 3G connection with up to five Wi-Fi-enabled devices

Sony Ericsson & Verizon Wireless

As promised, more than 50 PlayStation Suite game titles will be available at launch. The wide variety of games, along with the device’s slide-out gamepad controller, makes this about the best gaming device in the market.

Though many gamers out there would love to have this device, it simply is not for everyone. Just by loooking at the device, its size is definitely about the most noticeable aspect, which is due to the gamepad. If games are not that important, there are definitely other options that could better fit your needs. Many of you would prefer something thinner, or a keyboard instead of the controller, among other factors.

There you go, guys! The “PlayStation Phone” is finally here! Check out the press release, and Taylor’s article for more details about the Xperia Play. Who is planning to purchase this gaming phone? Do you think it is worth your time and money? If not, which device do you think will be your next?

Verizon Wireless and Sony Ericsson Take Mobile Gaming to the Next Level With the Sony Ericsson Xperiaâ„¢ PLAY
The World’s First PlayStation® Certified Smartphone Combines PlayStation®-Quality Gaming Experience with the Latest Android Smartphone Technology

BASKING RIDGE, N.J., May 17, 2011 /PRNewswire/ — Take conference calls, send emails and win football’s biggest game, all on one device. The Sony Ericsson Xperiaâ„¢ PLAY, for Verizon Wireless, redefines mobile gaming by combining all the features customers expect from a fully-featured smartphone with the ultimate gaming experience.

The Sony Ericsson Xperiaâ„¢ PLAY will be available for pre-order online at www.verizonwireless.com beginning May 19 and in stores on May 26 for $199.99 with a new two-year customer agreement.
Sony Ericsson Xperiaâ„¢ PLAY customers will need to subscribe to a Verizon Wireless Nationwide Talk plan and a smartphone data package. Nationwide Talk plans begin at $39.99 for monthly access and an unlimited smartphone data plan is $29.99 for monthly access.

Game Developers:

The gaming experience can only get better as additional games are being created. Developers have the flexibility to focus on content and not worry about binary file sizes when submitting apps to V CAST Apps. Developers can visit http://developer.verizon.com/play for additional information about game development for the Sony Ericsson Xperiaâ„¢ PLAY.

Hello, I am Edgar Cervantes. I am an avid Android fan, and keeping myself updated on the topic is part of my daily life. I will always work hard to give the best of me to our community of Android enthusiasts, and I am very honored to be part of this ship. Hopefully we can all enjoy sharing our knowledge and opinions!

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http://Website Dennis

Too little…too late…

http://Website R.S.

Let me guess, you are one of those “No dual core, no care” types?

Considering that there are still many single core phones being released (Do any of them have Gingerbread right out the box?), the specs on this phone aren’t as outdated as some people make it out to be.

If I was still with Verizon, I would heavily consider buying this phone for the following reasons:

I love playing NES games on my phone. With the Xperia Play, I’d be able to (easily) play SNES since it will have a similar button layout as the SNES controller had.

Playing PS1 games or new games released for the Xperia is bound to be fun.

I like that it’s not exactly a dainty phone.

If the Xperia goes to other carriers, like some rumors claim it might, within a short time of it being released on Verizon, I will consider it even more.

http://www.typhon4android.org/ Mike Leahy

Yeah… Unfortunately I’m going to have to pick up this device as word on the street is this device is a fragmented mess from a Java / Android SDK developer perspective. Apparently Sony Ericsson messed up the multi-touch API such that touch pointer IDs are not recycled and the number just keeps increasing and one gets an array index out of bounds case, so the dev must manually track pointer IDs; no other device requires this as it breaks the contract of the Android API. Apparently also the buttons do not generate key events in the Android API and there is an alternate, I believe, native API or something of that nature for button support. It sure would be nice if neither of these were true, but that is word on the dev street. Gonna buy it, fix stuff / patch things in my middleware so other devs that use it won’t have to custom code anything for this device, then sell it or return it if I can get it all done quick enough. So yep, apparently this device has some gnarly fragmentation attached to it cause…

Sony badger don’t care; Sony badger don’t give a s’ht about fragmentation. It just takes what it wants…

Well with some more insight from the Android dev email list it does appear the frag alert for the Xperia Play is being reduced from red to yellow. ;P Essentially documentation has always been incomplete / unclear surrounding multi-touch handling and more than a few of us who were around when 2.0 was introduced saw discussions on how to handle things on the email list from Android engineers at the time and were still working by those guidelines. Apparently things have changed, but these matters were never clearly added to documentation; a little voodoo if you will and this is the 1st device I’ve come across that behaves differently than all previous Android devices. It also turns out the buttons do fire key events, but the analog control pads require native code. So not as bad as I feared at first, but this still is a device I’m begrudgingly picking up to test with at some point.

I’m not going to buy this for myself, but I have a cousin who’s going to be getting this for his birthday. His parents are tired of him taking his PSP everywhere he goes but forgetting to throw his flip phone in his pocket.

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Guess you don’t have to connect to the PSN..or do you??

And the illegal emulators have been having issues with Android phones and none of them work perfectly. As a matter of fact, most of them don’t even work in the Galaxy S II.

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